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Tag Archives: the elder scrolls

After leveling all the main archetypes to around level 10, and being somewhat dissatisfied with all of them, I decided to try a hybrid build. I googled around to see a lot of people talking about how difficult spell-sword or mage/melee builds are, but I decided to roll one anyway.

I’m immensely happy that I did. I’m not sure what people are talking about, because this has by far been the easiest, (and the most fun), character I have rolled. My main skill is conjuration, which I use for bound weapons and Atronachs. My secondary skills are heavy armor, one handed weapons, and restoration, (largely for the regeneration perks). My offense is really powerful, since my melee benefits both from conjuration and one-handed skill points, and my defense is pretty good too. The only piece of light armor I wear is a nice hood, for the magicka. My character also looks cool, which is always a plus.

Today’s blockbuster game titles aim to be epic, but very few succeed. Opening a game with a flashy pre-rendered cut scene and dramatic music — usually involving opera singers for some reason or another – doesn’t make a game epic. What makes a game epic is finding yourself in a grand narrative, with a deep and fundamental sense of purpose driving you throughout the game.

Skyrim is a game that reminds us of what epic means. It does so excellently, and immediately. Skyrim’s spiritual predecessor, Oblivion, opened with the player awakening in a prison cell, presumably awaiting his execution; in Skyrim the game developers found a way to make the opening even more visceral and dramatic. When the player starts the game, the title “SKYRIM” fades into view in cold and stark type, mirroring the landscape you find yourself traveling in. Before long, it is clear that you are being taken to your executioner. Your hands are bound, you cannot move, and you do not speak. All of this creates a sense of helplessness, and allows you to listen to the tales of the convicts you are traveling with. Your convicts-in-arms reveal some of the backstory of Skyrim, including a sort of cold-war between the native Nords and the Romanesque Imperials – a topic that will be more adequately examined in a later blog post.

Quite obviously, the player is not executed; instead, a dragon causes a bit of a ruckus, allowing you to flee. (Surprise, surprise). You can choose whether or not you wish to follow the Imperials that took you captive, or the friendly Nord that you were captured with. For most players, this won’t be much of a choice. All but the most random Nord-despisers will choose the likable Nords over the annoying and militaristic Imperials. This may not seem like a big deal, but it does foreshadow a problem I have run into within Skyrim. The problem is, it feels as if many of your choices don’t ultimately matter.

To be fair, the lack of substantial choice is symptomatic of most games today – the notable exceptions being the Mass Effect series, and Dragon Age. Your actions outside of the main quest line of the game — e.g., whether or not you want to be a murderous member of the dark brotherhood, or a fighter in The Companions guild – don’t affect the main story line. There is little to no cross-over between the various quest lines in Skyrim, which makes the otherwise amazing and immersive world feel a bit inorganic, and stale. The game developers have implemented what they call “Radiant Storytelling”, which will change the world based on your actions. This makes random side quests more dynamic and potentially changing, but important quest lines like the ones mentioned before, will remain the same.

On a less comprehensive level, dialogue choices rarely have any significant effect on the ultimate outcome of a particular quest and story, and much of the dialogue appears to be filler. This isn’t to say that the voice acting in the game isn’t quite good. What this does mean is that you will find yourself selecting boring dialogue options such as: “What’s next? What now? Where should we go?” and the unimaginative “remain silent”. Unless you are immensely devoted to every NPC’s story, you will probably find yourself mashing buttons, (or keys), just to get to the end of a dialogue scene.

Still, it is easy to forgive Skyrim for occasionally falling flat with dialogue and quest choices. The game more than makes up for these flaws in both the quality and amount of content given to the player. The sheer number of NPCs with unique story lines and quests is almost intimidating. In Skyrim, you truly feel as if you are exploring a world, rather than a game. Besides the smaller fetch-quests and the main story line quests, there are also extensive side-quests. These usually involve in-game factions like the Thieves Guild or the College of Winterhold, (a faction geared towards magic-users).

Additionally, and rather amazingly, the three character archetypes – warrior, thief, and mage – are generally balanced in terms of gameplay difficulty. As one would expect, Warrior builds are the most straight-forward of characters. Thief, (read sneak), based characters are a bit more complicated to play than warriors, while mages are generally the most complex. There is a crucial and odd difference between magic users and warriors or thieves. Warriors and thief characters only have to focus on a handful of talent trees in order to be effective. As a mage, it is all but essential to grab Destruction, and very worthwhile to spend points in Conjuration, Restoration, Illusion, and Alteration. Still, what Mage’s might lose in devoting points into a single tree, they gain in versatility.

To nitpick, some skill trees could be simplified or made more worthwhile. Skyrim is a game built around combat, which means that many players, including myself, will doubtless ignore constellations like “Speech” or “Alchemy”. Sure, these perks have their uses in some cases, but I want to kill stuff. I much rather spend my time lighting enemies on fire or bashing in skulls than sitting at an alchemy table combining ingredients.

Thankfully, the wonderful thing about Skyrim, is that you can do what you want. If, for whatever reason, you do want to sit at a table combining ingredients all day – as opposed to traveling around an epic world slaying dragons – you absolutely can do that, or just about anything else you want to do. If you see a rugged and tranquil mountain in the distance, you can climb it. If you wish to kill everyone in a particular town, you can. In short, if you want to be coaxed away into an immersive, compelling, and dragon-filled world, pick up Skyrim – assuming you haven’t already.

I’ll continue to explore the world of Skyrim, and will be writing follow up posts soon.